"The Writers Institute's intimate dinner gatherings – typically 10 or 12 seated at a round table with a modest buffet from our University at Albany campus food service – are a reminder that wonderful things happen when we turn off our mobile devices, make eye contact and actually engage in the give-and-take of dialogue. At a recent dinner, the conversation swung around a couple of otherworldly experiences. One story revolved around a "possessed" Elvis Presley clock, actually a detour into paranormal activity. The Lady who spoke and her husband, explained that they were both fans of Elvis so they made a pilgrimage years ago to Graceland, where they purchased a kitschy clock that featured Elvis swiveling his hips in sync to the movement of the clock's tick-tock. The batteries had long died, but they left the clock on the wall for sentimental reasons. A decade later, the Lady described that while she watched a recent documentary on Priscilla Presley, the clock surged back to life and Elvis began swiveling his hips once more after years of stoppage. I was the dubious journalist again, arguing that so-called dead batteries retain a small amount of voltage even though they stop powering a device. Sometimes, they mysteriously recharge, but she refused to yield to the notion that the clock's unsettling movement could be explained by natural laws..."